That Foggy Night...
by Jhomeboy
Summary: Ginger finds herself in the hopsital, brusied and cut, along with Macie hurt and Dodie dead. She cannot remember what happened to have caused it until she hears of Dodie. Then...it all comes back. Stephen King Genre...and because I FELT LIKE WRITING THIS!
1. Waking Up

Well, it was time to write another fanfic. I took out my little spinner that marks every letter of the alphabet. I spun. It came up on "A." There aren't too many things I like that begin with A that I could write a fanfic about. Mostly, they begin with F and M, so I was stuck. Fortunately, "As Told By Ginger" was among the list items. So, enjoy this story and many others of my own in the Calvin and Hobbes and Stephen King areas as well. Enjoy…or else. If you don't R&R, I'll cry. Beware.

DISCLAIMER: I own the sky…I own the world…I own the wind that ruffles your hair in the crisp autumn air…but Lord, I sure don't own ATBG.

Also, a warning. I can copy Stephen King's style down the exact detail, so don't think this is going to be a mild supernatural story. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!

Why did I write this again? I can't remember…might have been bored, might have been stoned…I forget.

* ** *

"Whahell?"

She wasn't sure if it was her or not. It was hoarse and whispery, and the room seemed to be swimming. If it was her, she sounded so far off. She seemed to be talking in a dream.

"Oh my God, she's finally awake." she heard as her vision sharpened. This was also in her dream-hearing, that faint underwater sound. The room around her seemed to grow sharper and objects floated into place, pulling itself together into a room.

Before her was a large face with curled orange hair fluffing in a tight bundle on her head. She still couldn't see sharply, but she noticed that whoever this was, she had been crying a great deal.

Next to her was a smaller person, looked to be a boy. From the orangish hair and the oversized nose, she concluded that whoever they were, they were related, maybe even mother-son. He hadn't been crying as much as the motherly figure, but his eyes seemed to gleam with condensation in the bright fluorescent lights. 

A thought came into her head as her mind grew with resolution as well. _They're your family._

Ginger tried to sit upright, and only white hot pain seared through her arms. She uttered a single cry, a small one barely heard. The boy on the right side of her bed, the "son," grimaced slightly at the sight of Ginger trying to get back up. 

She sighed and collapsed back onto the bed. It took her a moment to realize that it wasn't her bed. It was all too…white. Just plain white, like vanilla in a blank room, or maybe in a…

"Hospital room…" she groaned as she realized her surroundings. Another groan escaped her lips as the woman (another thought popped into her head. _That's your mom)_ crouched forward to try to help Ginger up.

"Are…are you alright, Ginge?" her mom asked. The boy next to her (her brother, apparently. She could just barely figure out the name. Kevin or Calvin or something) leaned forward as well, despite the fact that something was obviously creeping him out.

"Let her rest, Mom." said 

(_Carl_)

the boy. "She just went through something horrible."

"Something horrible we don't know." cried the mother and tucked her head into her arms and started to cry again. The boy nodded sympathetically, then motioned back to Ginger. 

"What did happen?" Ginger sighed mentally. How the hell was _she_ supposed to know? She at first didn't even know who her own family members were. All she could remember was that it had to be something big to have put her in the hospital to the point where she couldn't move.

She didn't even know how bad it was. Was it something minor or was it

(_paralysis)_

something serious? "H-how bad is it?" she managed to choke out. Her mother suddenly began to sob worse and her brother even uttered a gasp. 

"Well, sis…y-you got a big gash running up the side of your stomach, across your chest, and up to your neck, where it just barely stopped…you got a big cut on your forehead…your right leg was broken in two places. It should all be healed up within six months, although you might have a couple of scars…"

The boy swallowed something fierce and shifted uneasily in his chair, as if he was hiding something he didn't want to say, but he wanted Ginger to find out…

"W-what else?" The boy uttered a tiny sob, barely audible, then spoke. "It's about Macie and Dodie." 

Who?

"Macie has been cut up real bad, but is expected to be okay in a few weeks…Dodie…oh God, don't make me say this…Dodie is…gone. Dodie is dead."

It all came back, all the memory banks suddenly opened the doors and let the dams burst. All the memory came swarming back up the river and into her mind. It was too much. Dodie and Macie, best friends. Dodie…dead. Ginger hurt. Brother named Carl, mother named Lois. Ginger uttered a cry of pain as the information suddenly hit her hard.

Carl hung his head low, as if a spy being interrogated for information. As if he had just let down Macie and the soul of Dodie for telling.

Fat, warm tears began to fall from Ginger's eyes as she suddenly realized the overwhelming information. 

"It's o-okay sis. It'll be alright…" he tried to console, but was not any good at it.

Ginger lifted her right arm with difficulty, with the white hot pain from before, and wiped the stinging tears from her eyes. She sniffed once and, as Carl would later note, that was it. It was all over. The emotion, the remorse, the sympathy. It all seemed to just have been flushed from her system and onto the hospital bedpan. 

"I-I remember. I remember it all. I know what happened." Her mother looked up, confused. Her eye shadow made a leaky trail down her face. Carl had also perked up. 

"I remember how Macie and I ended up in the hospital and Dodie was killed…how she was murdered."


	2. Calm Before the Storm

Well, to prolong this little series. Yup…that's the note…read my other stories too, though…please?…Well, r&r quickly or else Earth will be thrown off of its axis and thrown into the sun, for I have super powers. Don't believe what other people say, that I'm a pathological liar, for they will soon die. 

Oh, and cuz I know this is going to strike some people hard, this Stephen King-format story, I am going to use the flames on my next arson spree.

Ginger closed her eyes and tried to wipe the pain away. They were watching, waiting, and they almost seemed to be adding to the pain of the slashes all over her body. She was trying to remember all that happened, all that had cut her and Macie up and left Dodie dead, probably left in several pieces. 

She breathed deeply, taking in more air than she thought her lungs could capacitate, and suddenly let it all go. Her ribs ached from the breath and the long gash that had been almost deep enough to penetrate her left lung and stomach wall seemed to grow icy hot, as weird as it sounded.

She stared into the eyes of her mother and ever-so-loved (sarcastically said, mentally) brother and let the memory come out. She wouldn't recall ever speaking in a voice that had been as sane as that voice. Sane, yet masking the stark fear that was buried deep. 

* ** *

It had all happened a week before. The Oh-So-Merciful-School Gods had granted the Lucky High School the much needed Spring Break.

The air had never seemed so fresh. At least, not since Christmas Break. The flowers were starting to blossom, the leaves were returning, and crack dens were starting to open their shutters to fresh Connecticut air. 

The streets were filled with…cars, but the sidewalks was bustling with teenagers walking downtown to the park, and the skateboarders and rollerbladers headed down to the skate park, and etcetera. 

Fifteen year old Ginger, Dodie, and Macie trotted down the sidewalk along the fresh stream of kids, like salmon swimming upriver for spawning. 

"This…is bliss. This is ignorance, and ignorance is bliss." proclaimed Ginger, opening her arms as a fresh spring breeze lifted her vest and revealing her undershirt. It was just them, for many had fled for Florida or California or, in Courtney Gripling's case, France. Well, that was a exaggerated a little, but the ecstatic feeling was the same nonetheless. 

"So what do you guys wanna do today?" inquired Ginger. Dodie was first to burst out in suggestions. Naturally. 

"It's Sale Week at the mall! I'm pretty sure that Old Navy is having a sale on those little fleece vests you like, Ginger, but they also have Rugby shirts on sale again. I haven't seen those in two years." 

__

(**author's note. ** Those are all quotes of my family with the exception of the name Ginger and the sale from two years ago.) 

Ginger shrugged to Macie as Dodie began to hum silently the tune to the Old Navy Rugby Bunch.

"Here's a story…about a shirt named Rugby…hmm hmm hmmhmmmmm…" Ginger chipped in her suggestion next, reluctantly, and managed to cut off Dodie and her singing. "Well, 'Downfall' just came to theaters last week. We could go see that." A congested groan escaped Macie.

"Those theaters can be so unsanitary."

"You never complained before." Ginger pointed out.

"No, I didn't, did I?" 

Ginger shrugged it off.

The girls rounded the corner and turned into the darker side of Sheltered Shrubs, not too much unlike the South Side of Manhattan, down to scale. Tiny restaurants with Italian names and not-so-rich kids playing stickball littered the sides. Ginger had always thought that Sheltered Shrubs had been a fairly clean town, one of the better of Connecticut, but always this thought was thrown out the window when they would pass through this street. 

Not all of it was bad. A scrungy, elderly man with a wooden cart stood by the corner. His cart was filled to the brim with flowers freshly cut or stolen from around town. There was a sea of yellow. There was small red roses and baby's breath, but it was mostly yellow in that cart in three different types of flowers. It seemed impossible to fit them all in that tiny, enclosed space of the cart.

The old man smiled his gummy smiled to the girls, who nodded in return. He mentally knew they wouldn't buy any roses or baby's breath today. Teenagers (mostly boys, but every now and then the girls) only bought from his cart or from town whenever love-sickness was very deep in their faces. None of them expressed it. He merely turned back to his transistor radio, hanging from one of the posts.

Ginger, on passing the cart, was able to pick up the news being broadcasted out of the scratched and banged object that probably hadn't seen the light of day since the late fifties. All kinds of horrible news, it sounded like.

Blah, blah, blah, terrorist hijacked Pam 454, blah, blah, blah, suicide bomber blows self up in Pakistan, blah, blah, blah, the mysterious killer, labeled "Nightly Knife," still prowls between Sheltered Shrubs and Brittle Branches. The world was just full of bad news.

Ginger sighed and, with Macie on the left and Dodie on the right, moved on, through the little neighborhood and out again. 

(a/n. Weird little ending to Chap 2, I realize. Anyhoo, keep reading as the story starts to unfold. Keep that name in the back of your mind, the Nightly Knife. BWA HAHAHAHAHAHA!!) 


End file.
